George R. R. Martin - A Song Of Ice And Fire Book One: A Game Of Thrones (1996)

"'The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,' Ser Jorah told her. 'It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.' He gave a shrug. 'They never are.'"

Perhaps the most surprising thing about 'A Game Of Thrones', the first volume in George R. R. Martin's sprawling 'A Song Of Ice And Fire' series, is how focused it is. It has a cast of thousands, nine of which are viewpoint characters, yet it rattles along at a healthy pace despite its 800-odd pages, and there is something thoroughly elegant about how the different strands of the plot unfold to their grim conclusions.
   'A Game Of Thrones' is most assuredly Fantasy, from the detailed maps at the front of the book to the appendix detailing all the different family lines, replete with house sigils and words. But in many ways it's a deconstruction of modern fantasy as we know it, and of the various tropes and assumptions that are the very lifeblood and appeal of Fantasy as a genre.

Always start your book with a map. Preferably two.

  Tolkien's influence is pretty much as unavoidable in modern fantasy literature as, say, Star Trek's is on TV space opera. Martin is undoubtedly influenced by Tolkien, but while some books written in his wake have done little more than recycle the same character archetypes and symbols, Martin proves that by playing around with and subverting them there's still a lot of life and appeal left in them. So there is no dark lord waiting in Mordor with the serial numbers filed off here. There are no shining heroes either - many of the characters are deeply unpleasant, and even the characters with more heroic tendencies are far from perfect, and capable of making shocking mistakes. Magic exists - or at least, we have dragons and the zombie-like white walkers, but most of the people think they are extinct or legends.
   More than anything, though, there is a realistic focus on the feudalistic, medieval-ish setting that is the default for most Fantasy literature, and what it would really mean to live in such a society, especially for those disenfranchised by such a system. Amongst our viewpoint characters, we have Jon Snow, a bastard born to a Lord's family who is treated with contempt by his father's wife and will never be able to live the life given to his brothers and sisters born in wedlock; Tyrion Lannister, whose dwarfism mean that despite being intelligent, charming and by far the most likable character in the book he is an outcast treated with contempt by his father; and Daenerys Targaryen, a thirteen year old girl sold as a wife to the Dothraki in exchange for warriors by her vicious and power-mad brother. Experiencing the world of Westeros through their eyes strips away the romantic sheen from the age of chivalry and exposes just how harsh and difficult live could be in such times if you weren't a rich, white male (plus ca change....).
   In a lesser author so many different viewpoint characters could be confusing, (it's still helpful Martin states at the header of the chapter who's view it is), but Martin uses this device really well. It allows him to explore the fictional world through a variety of conflicting viewpoints, so we see many of the main characters, as well as things that happen, in different lights, helping to create a richly developed world. Additionally, Martin uses reminiscences or asides in one viewpoint character's chapter to set up Chekhov's guns for other characters. So for instance, when Tyrion remembers his past fascination with Aerys Targaryen's dragon skulls stored in the basement at the Red Keep in King's Landing, it tells us something about Tyrion's character, but also sets it up so that when Arya runs into 'monsters' while chasing cats we know what they are, even if she doesn't. It's an elegant way of making the text do extra work, which , in a volume this dense, is definitely appreciated.
   One of the main themes of the book is honour, and whether or not it's possible to have it in a society that doesn't really value it. This comes back round again to deconstructing the whole idea of chivalry. Many of the book's most unpleasant characters are lords and ladies, or indeed PRINCES. They show again and again that it is possible to behave in a courtly manner and still be a complete monster. I really enjoyed the chapters from Sansa's viewpoint, much as I don't care for the character. Basically she's tragically wrong genre savvy. A young girl who finds herself betrothed to the Prince, she declares herself hopelessly in love with him and is super excited about going to court and meeting noble knights like in the stories she loves. She's so blinded by her vision of how she thinks things should be it's far too late by the time she realises what is blindingly obvious to everyone else - that Prince Joffrey is spoilt, cruel and vile, and many of the Lannisters and their hangers on are not much better.

The Lannister words are "We're jerks! Except for Tyrion. He even gets to slap Joffrey. It's awesome."

   The book also questions what good honour and chivalry are, really, in the scheme of things. Following the climactic battle, Tyrion meditates on this, thinking about a knight he saw drown trying to cross a river in his full armour:

"Crossing a river at night on a crude raft, wearing armour, with an enemy waiting on the other side - if that was gallantry, he would take cowardice every time. He wondered if Lord Brax had felt especially gallant as the weight of his steel pulled him under the black water."

This cynicism extends to the narrative. This is a book in which no noble dead goes unpunished. Lord Eddard Stark, one of the few truly honourable characters in the book, reveals to Cersei Lannister that he knows her secret and is going to tell King Robert, giving her a chance to escape, when he knows that the previous man in his position was killed by the Lannisters to keep this secret. Unsurprisingly, this pretty much winds up getting him killed. Similarly, Daenerys' attempt to prevent the Dothraki warriors from raping a maegi leads to the death of her husband and her unborn son. But then this links in to how self-centred the viewpoint of even the sympathetic characters like Eddard and Daenerys are. Eddard is so bound to his honour he cannot see how his rigid adherence to it has wound up ruining other people's lives, until it's too late and his family is in danger; similarly Jon Snow is genuinely surprised to find out that his peers perceive him as a smug bully, because while he is a bastard, he was brought up in the Stark household and has the advantage of their wealth, education and training that wasn't available to his peers.
   'A Game Of Thrones' wears its Fantasy colours on its sleeve, but Martin has written SF in the past, and names many SF authors as influences. This comes through in the well-developed and convincing world building. We very much get a sense of Westeros as a real place, in some ways that almost feel SFnal. The central story, with its rival dynasties, echos Frank Herbert's Dune series as much as any fantasy narrative, and while we never get an explanation for Westeros' unusual season cycles, with summers and winters lasting many years, there's always an underlying feeling that it could be explained away in a scientific manner, like, say the aeons-long seasons in Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy.
   While 'A Game Of Thrones' is thoroughly engaging, exciting and entertaining, it's not perfect. Juggling so many characters in so many different places is a tricky balancing act at the best of times, and while Martin rarely falters in this book, the strain shows in places, and it's going to be difficult to maintain the focus 'Game' has over the following six books. Trigger warning - there is a whole lot of rape in this book. For the most part, it's played for drama rather than exploitation, and is there to highlight just how bad things were for women in medieval times and that raping was just one of the things armies did after a battle was won and it was just accepted, which is of course A BAD THING. However, Martin does go to this well a lot, to the extent that the reader starts to get numb to it, and it's just something that's frequently happening in the background. I don't think this is intentional on the part of the author, but it is an issue that needs treating with sensitivity and care, rather than slapped on to garnish a battle scene to make the story seem more gritty.
   There is a sense of Diabolus Ex Machina in some of the more outlandish plot developments - things don't just go wrong, they go wrong in the most gut-wrenchingly, barkingly mad way possible. My personal favourite of these is when Catelyn Stark, on the run from the Lannisters and with Tyrion captive, goes to her sister Lysa for help, only for us to find out that Lysa is petulant, spoiled and completely insane, and that Lysa's son, heir to a powerful house and vital tactical hold, is a simpering mummy's boy still breastfeeding at the age of six. Fortunately, these are pretty evenly distributed across all the opposing factions, to the extent that in the end it kind of works out more like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where it's just a super bad day for everyone involved. Joffrey's villainous triumph, where he executes Ned Stark, actually winds up being a woeful tactical error, leaving the Lannisters with nothing to bargain with when the Starks capture Jaime Lannister and inciting the houses of the north to swear fealty to the Starks instead. Martin's fondness for brutally killing off beloved characters rivals Joss Whedon's, and while that can give a thrilling sense that anything can happen and everything is up for grabs, it can also get off-putting. The last section of the book, with Ned Stark's shocking death and Sansa being forced to look at his severed head by an insufferably smug Joffrey, is almost unremittingly dark. However, the book ends with an image of death and rebirth, and dragons, which does make everything better. Roll on book two!


 

Frank Herbert - Hellstrom's Hive (1973)

"The words of Nils Hellstrom Unlike man, whose physical limitations are dictated from the moment of his birth, the insect is born with the ability to actually improve upon his body. When the insect reaches the limits of his capability, he miraculously transforms into an entirely new being. In this metamorphosis, I find the most basic pattern for my understanding of the Hive. To me, the Hive is a cocoon from which the new human will emerge."
 
Fan fiction is much maligned these days, understandably when bad slash fic of an already poorly written tale of a Mary Sue and her abusive dead boyfriend can top the bestseller list. However, there are examples of works of fiction that constructively take older works and recontextualise some of their elements in a way that the original creator would never have imagined. 

In the early 70s, 'The Hellstrom Chronicle' was a documentary about insects that became a surprise blockbuster hit. In order to encourage people to see a film that might otherwise be something of a niche interest, the film makers marketed it in the manner of a sci-fi thriller, and stitched together the (very fine) footage of insect life with footage of an actor pretending to be one Dr. Nils Hellstrom, an obsessive entomologist who, somewhat smugly and sardonically, informs the audience that insects have been around long before humans, and because they are better adapted to their surroundings, they will be here long after us as well. His admiration, and one suspects his sympathies, lie with the insects. 

Frank Herbert's 1973 novel 'Hellstrom's Hive' lifts the character of Dr. Hellstrom wholesale. Lines adapted from the film are used as introductions to most of the chapters. Readers of Herbert's 'Dune' series will be familiar with his technique of using quotations from fictional in-world reference works to create an added sense of depth and lived-in history to his world building, but tying his text so closely to a real world documentary brings the world of 'Hellstrom's Hive' closer to our reality. And as most of the words belong to Dr. Hellstrom himself, they allow us to spend more time inside his head, which is essential for the novel to work as well as it does. For Herbert's Dr. Hellstrom is not just obsessed with insects, he and his people use the insect as the blueprint to create their perfect society.

Mad scientists are ten a penny in SF, and insect people with a hive mind have been used as villains in the genre, usually rather tiresomely as stand-ins for Communism and the Red Threat in golden age SF, so on the surface it looks like there's nothing new here. Nor is there a simple subversion of the same old symbols - Dr. Hellstrom is definitely the villain, although arguably a villain protagonist. What's intriguing about Herbert's take on all this is that he uses this as an opportunity to reflect on human societies, utopias and dystopias. The Hive is interesting because it genuinely appears as a Utopia to all the people within it, but all the outside viewers see it as horrific. In 'Chronicle', the original Hellstrom muses both on  how individuals in a hive will altruistically lay down their life for their brethren,and how the insect is adapted to its surrounding ecology rather than destroying its surroundings to better suit it like man. In 'Hive', these are among the aspects that Hellstrom and his people consider most important to their society. They genuinely find the Hive a safe and caring place. Herbert gets a lot of mileage out of contrasting this with Outside, where America has become a police state and various corrupt government agencies vie with each other to get their hands on Dr. Hellstrom's mysterious Project 40, not out of any public interest but because it smells like big money and everyone wants a piece of it for themselves. 

However, just when the balance of sympathy is swinging towards Dr. Hellstrom and the Hive, Herbert takes savage glee in subverting it and reminding us that they really are villains. Everyone in the Hive is chemically manipulated by pheromones, hormones and compounds regulated in their food. Old or useless workers, or indeed captured outsiders, are sent to the vats, where they are turned into said food. The Hive runs an incredibly creepy breeding programme (as if there's any other kind) where they select desirable characteristics for future generations of workers, and then there's the whole thing with the 'reproductive stumps', which is truly shudder-worthy. And Dr. Hellstrom himself has the bizarre charisma of a cult leader, for which he is mistaken several times. 

In the end, the government agencies realise what the good Doctor is really up to, but just when they are about to unleash the full might of the US military, the Hive's scientists reveal their secret weapon, which of course is what Project 40 was all along, and hold the world to ransom. In the end, in a brutal parody of the Cold War, both sides achieve an uneasy truce, with both sides claiming victory to their own people whilst secretly gearing up for more confrontations further down the line. It's a particularly cynical and bleak ending. As in 'Dune', Herbert is not shy about mincing important characters, but due to this book's shorter length he has to achieve a lot more destruction in a shorter period of time. 'Hive' quickly builds to a deadly momentum and feels like it is careering out of control as the body count piles up, but behind it all the deft hand of the author is in strict control. In this it reminds me of Thomas M. Disch's 'The Genocides', though that book is even bleaker and more cynical. And although Herbert will always be remembered for the 'Dune' series, it is arguable that Dr. Nils Hellstrom is his most fully developed and compelling character. One of the biggest problems of the original 'Dune' is that the Harkonnens are little more than pantomime villains. In 'Hellstrom's Hive' Herbert proves he can write a well-developed, convincing and compelling villainous character. As for Dr. Hellstrom himself, even his temporary victory over the Outside forces is bittersweet. For he knows, deep down inside, that his charisma and intelligence, his very character, that allowed him to defeat the hostile forces, is what will eventually make him obsolete in his own Hive.